Running Buddies (cont.)

The lonely long-distance runner is a myth.

Thursday, September 20, 2012, 12:00 am

In our October 2012 issue we celebrated those who run alongside us, inspire us to greater excellence and share a bond near-impossible to describe. Nevertheless, last spring we asked more than 30 writers and runners to try to describe their running buddies. Nearly all of them responded admirably, creating an embarrassment of riches. In the print issue, we published nine essays that reflect the spectrum of relationships. Here, we present many more, from talented writers and exceptional runners, exploring the diverse and rich relationships that develop on the run.

Every summer for the past five years, this title — typically typed in all caps and decorated with exclamation points — appears in my Facebook inbox, commencing discussion among my former high school cross country teammates about our next girls getaway.

Weeks later, we stuff our duffel bags with running shorts and sports bras and swimsuits. We hit the grocery store for the essentials: Kelsey grabs the powdered donuts; Kerilyn, the fruit snacks; everyone, the supplies for s’mores. Then, the five or six of us — it fluctuates by the year — pile into our cars and drive four hours north to the beach of Lake Michigan.

Or more accurately, we pull into a tiny state park a short drive from the beach and pitch our tent. Hardly a luxurious girls getaway, but the spartan mindset was engrained in us through four years of running camps. Even the name, Dunies, came from a brutal repeat workout on the dunes of Michigan we ran every summer in high school.

We would escape into the woods, run hard miles, emit hard laughs, and leave recharged.

Years later, most of us recent college grads, our dynamic has slightly shifted. Our lives are no longer intertwined as they were when we spent hours together each day. We reside in different cities with different people. The weekend becomes a game of catch-up.

Then someone asks: “When should we run?”

“How far are you going?” another responds. The planning begins.

Let’s run before the beach.

I’m doing four.

Want to go on the trails?

We slide into our running shoes and are off. All of us. Our pack.

I hesitate with my first steps as I wait to see how fast my partners will move. In the months since we last ran together, some of my former teammates have trained for college races, others have finished marathons and continued a years-long streak of consecutive days. No longer are we seconds apart on our mile splits, all running for the same goal of winning the state meet.

In seconds, though, we’re jibing. We disrupt the serenity of the woods with our laughter and the familiar patter of our feet. I remember how easy it is to ignore pain when caught up in the camaraderie of other runners and silently vow to find a running group back home.

“Weasel!” someone calls, not to alert of an animal but to tease the runner inching her way between the two in front of her, the innocent crowding that occasionally leads to shoe scraping and breathing down necks. The term hasn’t lost its touch after five years.

And suddenly, I’m back. Back to the world of our own teenage language and 50-mile training weeks and 10-mile runs where we’d jog in place at red lights, and pump-up notes before big meets and, “Run hard, dream big.” Back to the 6 a.m. practices before school and inspirational logbook sessions and dips in the pool after summer tempo runs. To the joy of young successes, the heartbreak of injuries.

The Dunies email didn’t come this year. One of us was planning a wedding, while two had already gotten married and were settling into their new lives. All of us were spread across six states. I was the farthest in Oregon.

Maybe this summer marks the end of a tradition, fizzled by the frenzy of life after college. We will stay in touch, no doubt. Get together when we can. But maybe the challenge of fitting one weekend getaway into six tight schedules has grown too daunting. Maybe.

I got a different email in my inbox this summer from a former teammate, Michelle. She wrote about her plans for July to visit me at my new home, a city she had never explored. She hoped it was all right.

Of course it was.

When she came, we hiked around the waterfalls and walked along the beach. We stocked up on fruit snacks and granola bars and demanded life updates. How’s Cincinnati? Your job? Family?

Among the shower of questions, there’s one I didn’t have to ask.

I already knew she packed her running shoes.

Rachel Stark is a runner, writer and Indiana native currently living in Portland, Ore. She moved to the west in 2011 after graduating from Indiana University, and she hopes the Dunies will one summer come for a visit.

SUFFERING WITH DREWby Anton Krupicka

In rural Nebraska, high school sports are king. In high school I was tiny — 4-foot-10 and 80 pounds as a freshman — and after approximately two weeks of attempting football that inaugural August, I accepted the realities of my physique and recommitted myself to the misfit sport that I’d already experienced a measure of success in: running.

The following autumn, I successfully petitioned the school board to add cross country to its slate of extracurricular activities, but it was a cross country program in little more than name only; my schoolteacher mom was the “coach,” I was the sole member of the “team,” and that first season was derailed almost immediately by a stress fracture in my foot, sustained as a result of my body undergoing a rapid growth spurt.

And then, during my junior year, a mini-miracle occurred. Another student decided he was going to be a cross country runner too. Drew Marshall was an ambitious, opinionated, painfully skinny freshman with — I would soon find out — a truly remarkable capacity for pain tolerance. Obviously, he was going to make a great distance runner.

That first fall, Drew only experienced modest success, while I had a bit of a breakout season by finally qualifying for the state meet. But in his sophomore year, Drew returned as a completely different runner. In the intervening summer he had mowed a rugged 5-mile course through the pastures and fields of his family’s river bluff farm and run this relentlessly undulating loop religiously, quietly cultivating the kind of aerobic strength and sheer mental toughness that is paramount to success in the sport.

That fall Drew seemed to grow stronger with each passing race. Sidelined by anemia, I remember witnessing him blaze to a most unlikely second-place finish in the district championships, where he ran so hard that he nearly missed the awards ceremony afterwards because he was still in the bathroom violently throwing up his ritual pre-race blue Powerade.

The summer following my graduation from high school is when our running partnership really took off. Drew and I were both working at the swimming pool at Niobrara State Park, and we were both diligently preparing for the upcoming cross country season’s rigors. I would be an NCAA Division III runner at Colorado College that fall, while Drew — emboldened by the previous year’s successes — was ready to take his running to a new level in his junior year of high school.

Every lunch break that that summer — after a morning of painting park picnic tables and outhouses — Drew and I would race around the hilliest 5-mile loop the park had to offer, developing a special unspoken bond that could only be forged from suffering in the humidity and 100-degree F heat that high noon in a Nebraska summer offers. On days when we sought a particularly hard workout, we would stretch our runs to 7 miles by adding a roundtrip into town. Along with the requisite purchase of a bag of potato chips or a Snickers bar at the gas station in town, squeezing this length of run into our lunch hour required a sub-7:00/mile pace during the heat of the day and with a grueling climb back up into the hills of the park.

Our training philosophy was basically that racing cross country was really hard, so we would prepare by simply doing really difficult things. Our benchmark workout was to run the mile-long climb from the river bottom to the highest point in the park — a mountain by Nebraska standards at approximately 400 feet.

We ran as hard as we could, suffering simply for suffering’s sake — a precursor to the form that my running would eventually take. Having Drew as a running partner laid the foundation for what has become a lifestyle of running, where I still seek out the most difficult terrain and cherish the unique relationships forged along the way.

Anton Krupicka is a mountain runner and outdoor ambassador for New Balance, Ultimate Direction, and Buff Headwear. When he's not seeking the next high-altitude summit, he spends his time exploring the craggy peaks above Boulder, Colo.

MY BROTHER, MY BUDDYby Bill Pierce

Runners perform better with a pacer. Most great performances result from the aid of a rabbit or a duel between competitive equals. I received my lifelong pacer at birth, which meant spending my childhood trying to catch my bigger, stronger and faster 3-year-older brother, Don. Whether we were racing around the house, running to our grandmother’s house a half mile away, creating our own track meet in the backyard, or sprinting up the steep banks leading to our West Virginia home, it was always a race. It was a good day when I could keep up with him.

We were fortunate to share many sporting experiences. We swam on the same AAU team and were starters on our high school basketball team that made it to the state's final four. In one high school three-team track meet, we won five individual running events, two jumping events and ran the lead and anchor legs of the 880 relay team. Running was pure play for us. It still is.

Since college age, we have been competitive equals. In countless races from 5Ks to marathons, our times are nearly identical. Side by side, simultaneously competing and encouraging each other, we never know if one will pull away from the other. Even when the pace feels too fast for one of us, we figure, “If my brother can maintain this pace, I should be able to.” Back and forth, each drives the pace in turn throughout a race, pushing both of us to our potential. Our competitive natures may have mellowed now that we are in our 60s, but only slightly.

Don and I judge success by how we perform compared to each other’s results, rather than by our time, place or age-graded results. We try like hell to beat each other, but rejoice in the mutual success that accompanies those rare occasions when we cross the finish line together, with neither having been able to break the other.

Of my 39 marathons, 28 have been run with Don. Those shared experiences include the good, the bad and the ugly. "The ugly" generally include some tale about his retrieving me from the medical tent. One of "the good" memories occurred in the 1981 Great Potato Marathon in Boise, Idaho. With only 2 miles left to the finish, we were both silently doing the finish time calculations and realized that we couldn't let up if we wanted a then-Boston qualifying sub-2:50. At an unmanned intersection we took a wrong turn and ran about 150 yards before a course monitor saw us and yelled. We retraced our steps, each knowing we had to run even faster to make up for lost time. Not a word was spoken as we entered Bronco Stadium and began a lap around the track in a full neck-and-neck sprint. Even though it had always been a race to the finish, realizing it had been a team effort, we clasped hands, tying for ninth and 10th overall with our ticket to Boston.

Of course, racing partners need to train. Over 40 years and thousands of training runs, I always have the measure of how I did against my brother, regardless of altitude, elevation, heat or cold. And the last mile of every training runs stimulates an unspoken test that elicits a grin for both of us, which belies the inevitable post-run “I didn’t realize we were picking up the pace.”

Bill Pierce, a 2:44 marathoner, is professor and chair of the health sciences department at Furman University and co-founder and coach of the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training (FIRST).

THE JOVIAL MONKby Roger Robinson

Mike Turner would have made a good monk. Running for him was a discipline and a devotion, a rigorous source of joy. To us lesser runners, he was the Iron Man for his unwavering commitment, but he was also (like a jovial monk) light-hearted, laughing company at all times — except in the middle of a fierce 5-minute repeat across fields of glutinous Cambridgeshire mud.

A much better and more dedicated runner than I was, Mike tolerated my lapses and complaints generously. His most common phrase was, “Get up, Robinson, only two to go.”

At 19 we arrived at the same college of Cambridge University in England. He was always the leader among the student runners, sure in his beliefs (train harder than anyone else), iron-willed in his example, yet kind, never stern or critical, and so able to transform modest talents into good competitors.

He did that for me. I’d been a runner since my early teens and always loved it, but I had never really committed myself. Three runs a week and not at all in summer is how I remember my teen years. I didn’t start a running diary till after I met Mike. Life was too full. I didn't see myself as good enough at running. We had no coach at high school, which was great for learning independence, but hard when it came to setting your sights high. Then I went to University and met Mike.

Training with a friend who was a better runner, better informed, positive in his opinions, and also warm and likeable, my dilatory amateurishness about running began to change. Just before turning 21, I ran seven days in a week for the first time, four of those days with Mike (according to that diary I had just started to keep). The conversations were always lively, however hard we ran. His is a direct and confident mind, while mine tends to question and qualify. So I asked things and he answered them, and I questioned the answers — a good match.

Mike and I ran together often during our 20s, sometimes every day. The friendship became a close partnership when we were paired in the Cambridge University John o' Groats to Land's End Relay, a team of eight students running the entire length of Great Britain (850 miles) in just over three days. It's a short-cut to lifelong friendship when you learn in the heat of action that you can absolutely trust the other person to deliver.

The best years came when we were both working on our Ph.D. research, in different subjects, a time of blissful freedom from schedule constraints. We ran together, often very hard, in the middle of every day. (“The only time it's worth being outside in winter,” Mike said in his definitive way.) Our staple was long repeats across tough, muddy country. Then we would have a hot soak in the deep old-fashioned College baths, and from the next cubicle Mike would sing, in his lyrical light tenor — folk songs, mostly, or hymns, from his days as a boy treble in the Liverpool Cathedral choir. Then we lunched cheaply, and talked and laughed a lot. It all knocked a hole in the day, and meant working late in the library. But what I learned in those days — from Mike, from the million topics we discussed, and from the English countryside that we explored together so closely — made it time well-used.

He took on club duties, and he would do anything for a team or another runner. “No bother, no bother at all!” was his rhythmic mantra, chanted almost musically. He may have fallen short of his ultimate as a runner because he ran hard so often for team points. But he was happy in the community of runners. At parties he would often sing ballads, or Beatles songs — like them, he was from Liverpool, and knew the world of Penny Lane.

By now Mike was among the world's best cross country runners. He was England's captain in a supreme era, with teammates during his 10 years at that level who included Basil Heatley (Olympic marathon silver), Bruce Tulloh (European 5,000m champion) and Ron Hill (European and Boston Marathon champion). Among such colossal heroes, as they seemed from my level, Mike was liked, admired and feared, just as he was by me. He beat Hill for the British Universities title, and came literally within an inch of beating him for the England cross country championship in 1966. That day, a little farther back in the field, I astonished myself and the running world by making it to international selection for the first time. It was Mike for sure who made that unlikely leap possible. It was Mike who showed me that running is worth doing well, and worth thinking about well. That helped shape my life.

Now he is in bad health, despite running daily until his late 60s, and walking after that. Early in 2012 he had a stroke. Unthinkably, he is in a wheelchair, struggling to climb two steps to his apartment. But for me he will always be the light-hearted Iron Man, the man of discipline and song, of zest and rigor, the kind friend who could run away from me so heartlessly over the wide ploughed acres.

Roger Robinson, former international-class runner and professor of literature, is a senior writer for Running Times and the author of numerous books.

THE GEEK AND Iby Rachel Toor

On a trail in the Duke Forest I was explaining to Owen that I’d just seen Stanley Fish, literary theorist and legal scholar, columnist for The New York Times, and my former boss, and that he was sporting a mustache. The conversation, I told Owen, went something like this:

Owen laughed, and we moved onto another typical topic, something like how to figure a standard deviation, or gossip about the cast of Gosford Park, or how much money is enough for someone to consider himself “rich.”

A few days later I sent Owen an email and asked if he had a mustache.

He said he was wondering when I was going to figure that out.

At that point we’d been running together for years. He’d always had a mustache. I just never noticed.

Owen is neither cop nor porn star. He is a professor of computer science at Duke, a geek of the highest order. He says things like, “You’re completely wrong and I’m going to tell you exactly how,” and then he does. If I wimp out of a run he will text back “wimp.” He talks about the “inverted curriculum” and when I say I don’t know what that is he asks if I’m stupid or if I’ve just been living under a rock.

He usually runs two or three strides ahead of me and says if I want to talk to him I have to run faster. Run faster, he says, as if it’s that simple.

I first encountered Owen not long after I’d become a runner, at a Carolina Godiva Track Club annual dinner. During the slide show he sat with the fast guys and spat out heckling commentary. Funny and clever, sure, but I didn’t like him.

Years later, when I was working in undergraduate admissions, I discovered Owen was one of the most popular professors on campus — students wrote application essays about wanting to attend Duke because of him. He was, I learned, charming in front of a group of 300, but awkward and uncomfortable in more cozy settings.

We started running together, at first with another computer scientist, Jeff, who loves to argue more than anyone I’ve ever met. Jeff and I would argue — even when we agreed — and Jeff and Owen would debate and I’d chime in and the run would turn into a cacophony of voices trying to outsmart and out-funny the others. The conversation rarely veered personal. Perfect running buddies.

I was nervous the first time I ran with just Owen. Without Jeff along, I steeled myself to bear the brunt of combative banter. Plus, Owen was faster than me. By a lot. That worried me. At the end of 6 miles, I knew he would become my favorite running partner.

Over many years and miles, I have seen Owen’s edges smooth and soften, at least with me.

He is still reliably snarky, but he is also a man of such compassion and gentleness I find it hard to see him the way others must, the way I used to. His wife, Laura, and his boys know how kind he can be, but I suspect few others do. When I worry aloud, or offer self-criticism that deserves a smart-aleck response, his supportive rejoinders disarm and buoy me.

I’ve had lots of male running buddies, and often I see sides of them that are not apparent under suits and macho posturing, but with Owen it’s different. I thrive onknowing that his geeky demeanor, quick and intellectually agile, hides a man who is also warmer and more generous than most people. And I get to see it.

We strike a compromise, fall into a pace that is quick for me and slow for him and then we settle in for a conversation that can range from popular novels to theories ofpedagogy to the effects of aging on 50-year-old dicks to politics to what we each had for dinner the night before. He is willing to talk about anything, and I’m always interested in his take. When I have some big question I’m trying to think through, I hoard it for a run with him.

We don’t live in the same town anymore, haven’t for years, but I go back frequently, and when I do, I always plan a run with Owen, two strides behind, and grateful for hiscompany.

Rachel Toor's most recent book is Personal Record: A Love Affair with Running. She is a senior writer for Running Times and teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane.

KEEP DOING THE HARD THINGSby Ian Torrence

Ian,

It’s amazing over a decade has passed since we ran down those dusty trails of Western States in 1999. Thank you for running alongside me on the many miles of ascents and descents — both on the trails and in life. Life is an ultramarathon. Keep doing the hard things! Always dig deep!

- Jureker

And with that, Scott Jurek laid down his pen and handed me his newly released book, Eat and Run. It was May 25, 2012, and we were in Las Vegas for Jurek’s bachelor party.

Had you asked me more than a decade ago if the 27-year-old I trained beside for hundreds of miles on Seattle’s Burke-Gilman Trail and accompanied on the dusty paths of the Grand Canyon would ever write a book, I would have snorted and dismissed you with a wave of my hand. Scott was so young and, back then, virtually unknown. Besides, memoirs were for crusty, tired old farts.

I first met Scott in 1998 at a tough 50-mile trail race in northern Arizona. He not only finished an hour ahead of me, but he waited for me to cross the finish line to introduce himself. In so doing, I witnessed his trademark sportsmanship. And so began our friendship. From that point on, our paths crossed a multitude of times as competitors, training partners, drinking buddies, and mutual advisers.

The next year, I got revenge and filleted him at a rugged 50K in the Cleveland National Forest. Later, we ran step for step at an ultramarathon on Catalina Island, but in the final miles, as Scott made a break for the finish line, I watched him turn and disappear down the wrong trail, allowing me to take all the glory. We returned once to the Zane Grey 50 Mile Endurance Run, the site of our first meeting, and crossed the finish line together. But when it really counted, Jureker buried me. He left me in his dust at a 100K national championship race in Pittsburgh and he never looked back during several of his seven Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run victories, the race that not only made the ultra community a believer in his abilities, but the world as well.

In 2001, I wrote about my accomplished friend for this publication in a piece called “Scott Jurek: Young Man of the Mountains.” As I reminisced about one of our training runs around Mt. Rainier, I discussed the uniqueness of his diet, his strict training regime, and his racing successes. Eleven years later, these same characteristics have made him one of the most well-known and respected ultrarunners on the planet.

In his book, Scott recalls a moment, almost 14 years ago, when he was vomiting on the side of the trail during his first bid for a Western States victory. As his pacer that day, I still hold myself responsible for that bad patch. But he recalls how my mere presence, my comforting hand on his back, and my words, Everything’s going to be OK,” rallied him to push on for the win.

Since then we’ve reciprocated these same reassurances several times over, but in different situations. We were once 20-something ultrarunners whose primary concerns centered around workouts, races, and rankings, but as we near our 40s, we’ve been faced with bigger, more complex trials. Working through these challenging nonrunning experiences has fortified our friendship further as we’ve grown.

I thanked Scott and placed the book in my backpack as we made our way out to the car. We struck out for Mount Charleston (a short drive from the Las Vegas Strip) with several other good friends in tow to celebrate yet another Scott Jurek milestone. As the bachelor party started up the steep sloped miles below the mountain’s 12,000-foot summit, I couldn’t help but think that this guy, already a switchback above, was far from crusty and definitely not as tired as I had hoped. Keep doing the hard things! Always dig deep! Indeed, my friend.

Ian Torrence has completed 166 ultras, with 50 wins. Ian works as an online coach at McMillan Running in Flagstaff, Az. You can read more about Ian’s adventures at his blog, Reinventing the Run

A WINNING FRIENDSHIPby Nicole Blood

With one lap to go, I was right on her heels. She took steady deep breaths and her form was flawless; I could tell she was still relaxed. And so was I.

She started increasing the pace, pumping her arms and lifting her knees, but I didn’t lose a step. I knew it was going to come down to the last 100 meters, so I waited to make my move.

Down the back straightaway, teammates stood silent with wide eyes and dropped jaws, but spectators loved the intensity and encouraged the battle with cheers and hollers. It was a race between two teammates, a race between two friends.

Around the last turn, our women’s coach yelled, “Finish together!” But we ignored the command. We both wanted the win: a Pac-10 championship title.

Approaching the finish line on the back straightaway, we were stride for stride. Seconds felt like days, but finally, it was over. And this time, my foot led hers.

A spectator would never guess that Alex Kosinski and I were such great training partners in practice, and even better friends off the track. We obviously had a complicated relationship, being teammates, friends and competitors. But it worked.

Alex joined the team when I was a sophomore at the University of Oregon, and almost immediately she became my primary training partner. We showed up to preseasoncamp in September 2007, in better shape than the rest of the team, so we bonded in the front of the pack on runs and workouts, and eventually races too. Throughout that cross country season, I got accustomed to having Alex by my side in races with hundreds of women in different colored uniforms surrounding us. We worked together until the pack disintegrated, and then we were on our own.

Alex and I built off each other’s strengths. She had a little more leg speed than I, so naturally, I had to work a bit harder on short intervals. I looked forward to the longer intervals and tempo runs when I typically had an easier time than she did.

It was good for us to swap roles and share power because training with competitors can be a dangerous game. You learn a lot about a person during weeks of 13-mile long runs, 25-lap track workouts and 50-degree ice baths together. You will see them at their strongest and weakest moments.

Most athletes will admit that it’s easy to get intimidated by a training partner who is having a better day than you are. It’s also tempting to take advantage of the days you’re feeling better than your partner. In both cases, one athlete takes away from the other.

I never once felt that Alex was trying to hammer me into the ground, and I know for certain that I never tried to make her feel defeated. Of course, there were workouts where one of us lagged behind. That happens. But a bad workout for me did not propel a breakthrough workout for Alex. She would simply hit her times, pat me on the back and call it a day.

The key to our relationship was that we truly wanted each other to succeed. We ran the same workouts, logged the same miles and spent the same hours at practice every day. Alex worked just as hard as I did, and because I always felt I deserved to run well, she certainly did too.

Alex was the best training partner I ever had, and I am grateful for the three years we worked together at Oregon. We were competitive when we needed to be, but friendly and supportive, always.

New Yorker Nicole Blood signed to attend the University of Oregon in 2006, excited to live and train in Track Town, USA. At Oregon, Blood was a nine-time All-American, three-time Academic All-American and four-time Pac-10 champion. She was one of the most decorated female student-athletes in Oregon history. After graduating in 2010, Blood signed with Nike to run professionally. Last year, she decided to move back east to continue training, and she recently joined the coaching staff at Columbia University in New York City as the women’s assistant coach of cross country and track and field. As a former high school and collegiate stand-out, a professional athlete, and now a division-one university assistant coach, Blood has much experience and knowledge in the sport of track and field that she enjoys sharing with the running community.

FIRST WITH THE HEAD, THEN WITH THE HEARTby Candace Karu

My best friend died when I was 7, forever changing the way I thought about friendship. Over the course of more than half a century, Janey has remained a part of me. Her spirit resides in me, a clean, uncomplicated presence, distilled into equal parts love, memory and comfort.

I don’t dwell on how painful it was to lose her. Instead I remember how fast we used to run from my house to the woods, or how much I loved making her giggle, or how smart she was. What remains of my friend is her essence. Her unique and irreplaceable life force lifts and sustains me to this day.

Forty years later I lost another friend. And, because of Janey, I knew, even in the throes of my grief, the loss would eventually transform from something dark and heavy to a feeling lighter and more bearable, no longer a weight, but a bright, buoyant presence.

The loss of Andy Palmer left me forever altered, and profoundly grateful to have had him in my life. He helped shape me as a runner. He made me believe in myself as an athlete. He was my mentor, my coach and my dear friend.

We met at Maine Running Camp, though it really should have been called Andy Camp, a place defined not by geography but by personality. MRC was Andy; it embodied his values, his principles, and his off-the-wall sense of the absurd.

I arrived a day early for my first camp week, checking in before most of the other campers. Minutes after emerging from my car, Andy hustled me up to Acadia National Park for my initiation on the pristine carriage trails that made the park a runner’s paradise. Mismatched in both ability and stride, we somehow managed to fall into an easy cadence, a syncopated rhythm that described our friendship for 15 years. That run cemented a bond that grew and evolved over the years until Andy’s death in 2002.

We were friends, running buddies, and professional colleagues. More than a decade after his death, his influence remains strong, a comforting presence that emerges regularly, depending on need and circumstance.

When I find myself flummoxed by life, especially my running life, when answers are hard to come by, I often ask WWAD? What would Andy do? The answers that come to me speak to his character, his compassion, and his huge heart.

What would Andy do?

Andy would train harder.

Andy would go the extra mile.

Andy would turn back to help the stragglers.

Andy would switch to racing flats.

Andy would get more sleep.

Andy would do more research.

Andy would rewind the training tape and watch it again.

Andy would find the good.

Andy would discover a new path.

Andy would let it roll off his back.

Andy would change the workout.

When all else failed, Andy would order pizza. And try again the next day.

He once gave me the book that he said transformed his life, The Power of One by Bruce Courtenay. Two quotes from that book appeared regularly in his emails to me and guide me to this day. His favorite was: “First with the head, then with the heart.”

The other was: “Never take advice from a donkey.”

Andy was funny like that.

Candace Karu is a writer, food blogger and social media consultant who lives and trains in a small town on the coast of Maine.

A SHARED UNDERSTANDINGby Gordon Bakoulis

In 1985 I joined the women's running team Atalanta. Now defunct, the team was an NYC-based group of local elite females that included age-group champions Toshi D'Elia and Angella Hearn and Olympic trials qualifiers Marilyn Hulak and Cindi Girard. I joined the team knowing nothing about post-collegiate club running; what drew me was simply the opportunity to take part in group speed workouts, which I realized was the ticket to getting faster without succumbing to injury or overtraining.

Being a team runner had its challenges for me, a runner who'd spent just one season running on a high school team and had bypassed collegiate running entirely. I quickly established myself as one of the faster runners on the team, which led to self-imposed pressure to always "win" the workouts.

An unmitigated benefit of team running, however, was introducing me to more than a dozen regular training partners. After a few months, I'd fallen into a consistent pattern of meeting one teammate, Andrea, for regular morning runs in Central Park.

Our routine was, well, very routine: We'd meet at precisely 6:30 every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning on West Drive at 90th Street and run a 6-mile counterclockwise loop. That was it. These were our recovery runs, which in those days (we started in early 1986) were about 7:00 to 7:15 pace. Occasionally we'd run long together on the weekends, sometimes with Andrea's boyfriend/husband (they married in 1988), a committed ultrarunner.

Andrea and I talked about everything on those runs, as young women do (I was 25, Andrea 4 years older): our jobs, our friends, our partners, our families, our feelings, frustrations, joys, aspirations and confusions. Perhaps we even talked about running from time to time, though I don't recall many of those conversations. We were committed to our training, to being there for one another, to the deep friendship that developed.

The running-partner relationship lasted for just over four years, until I quit my job following the 1989 New York City Marathon to devote myself to full-time running. I stopped getting up before dawn to train, I stepped up my training pace. Andrea understood. We missed each other but we both understood that the training partnership had run itscourse. We still ran together occasionally on weekends, but these runs soon became few and far between and eventually petered out. It was OK, for both of us. Andrea and Bill were looking to start a family, I was trying to make the 1992 Olympic team.

Two decades on, Andrea and I have gone our separate ways, in running and in life. I still run regularly and competitively; Andrea makes it to the park just once a week or so for a jog. We're both busy with teenage children and demanding careers that keep us moving in parallel and rarely intersecting lines. We both are married to second husbands. We keep in touch almost exclusively through Christmas cards and occasionally bumping into each other in our Upper West Side neighborhood.

Yet our running bond endures. Twenty years on, I sometimes dream of running with Andrea, of speaking my heart to a partner as we glide together over silent roads in semi-darkness, of feeling a closeness that can't be put into words, of a shared effort and aspiration, of words spoken and unspoken. In these dreams, and in reality, when I meet Andrea on the street and we're able to take a few moments to speak, there's no small talk. We ask each other about our families of origin, husbands, children, ambitions, dreams. Our answers are unfiltered, unadorned, truthful in a way I know with few others. They stem from a shared understanding, forged on the roads a quarter-century ago, a trust and knowingness. In my dreams and in the reality of our conversations, we look directly into each other's eyes and we feel a connection that cannot be lost or forgotten.

Gordon Bakoulis is a former editor-in-chief of Running Times and now editorial director at New York Road Runners.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT BJby Robert Reed

His name is built with initials. Once during a hard 10-miler, I asked what “BJ” stood for. He told me the full story, but we were doing a hard 10-miler and anaerobic respiration murders my memory. All I remember is that he got the nickname early in life, and years ago, with the approval of the courts, he dropped the old name and officially became BJ.

I’ve run with the man for more than 15 years, and I know how to beat him. Show up in better shape than he is and never give him motivation. And whatever you do, don’t pass him in the middle of the race and then linger in view. The man possesses a nearly mystical capacity to push his body deep into misery, and even when he’s heavy and out of shape, he can cover all sorts of ground.

BJ has had surgery on his arthritic big toes. In the last few years, I’ve sprained my good knee and ripped a hamstring. Coming back to running, we always call each other first.

I can’t count the times that he’s beaten me, or for that matter, that I’ve gotten the best of him in some little road race.

BJ has been to my house hundreds of times. I live in the middle of town, running trails everywhere. He lives on the outskirts, and if pressed, I could probably point to his neighborhood. But our groups don’t run from his house, and our social lives cross only with running and related events. Fifteen years into this relationship and I haven’t once stood on his front lawn.

I know his wife, but we haven’t spoken for years and I might not recognize her at a glance.

BJ married into a complicated, sprawling family, and I can’t keep track of the various stepchildren and grandkids.

He’s younger than me by several years. We’re not in the same age group today, but we will be soon enough. And we’ll know when it happens, lining up at the same races, not ready to kill ourselves but willing to murder the other guy to earn a temporary lead in our friendly war.

Running is my first passion. Not BJ’s. He makes pilgrimages to the Pine Barrens in New Jersey to learn how to build fires and track deer and other survivalist pursuits, andhe’s helped me write stories where my characters are trying to survive in the wilderness.

I’m a science fiction writer, and I’m not an optimist about the future. Sometimes during long runs I’ll rage about the frailty of civilization and how the world could shatter tomorrow.

Not only does BJ tend to agree with me, he seems to look forward to the day when we’re living inside an apocalyptic nightmare.

My friend used to drink and smoke. He quit long before I met him, but he has shared enough stories about his feral youth to make me believe that there’s another person inside him — someone who isn’t punctual and self-controlled.

BJ used to be a prison guard and a crack shot but he never got to shoot any escaping felons, which he seems to regret.

His wife is his second wife, and I don’t know the ex.

He used to be a butcher, and he has endured drug studies for quick money, and today he’s an IT wizard for the state.

Both of us like to watch “Survivor” and ”Doctor Who.”

BJ has read a couple of my books, but he’s not a burning fan, and I’m thankful for that.

Fifteen miles a week for more 15 years implies that we’ve run together for more than 10,000 miles, which puts him near the top two or three running partners in my life.

And what his name when he was a kid?

Benjamin Jackson? William (Bill) Jefferson?

Or was it Beatrice Jacqueline?

Now that would put an interesting twist to the volumes I don’t know about the guy.

Robert Reed is a science fiction author and a Hugo Award winner. He lives and runs in Lincoln, Neb.

CHATTY BOBby Ed Ayres

It was the mid-1970s, and we lived in what was euphemistically called a “marginal” neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Four blocks east was the infamous 14th-Street Corridor, where the riots of 1968 had happened and it seemed like half the city had gone up in flames. A lot of the buildings were still boarded up. But an equal distance to the west was Rock Creek Park, where you could run for hours on wooded trails. When I bought my house for almost nothing, thanks to the surroundings), I thought I was the only runner within miles. Distance running wasn’t an inner-city thing. Then I bumped into Bob Harper, who lived just around the corner and who had bought a similar fixer-upper. What were the chances? Not only had Bob and I both run marathons, but we’d both been bitten by a new bug: the notion of running an ultra.

By then, I’d been running for nearly 20 years, and since finishing college cross country had never had a running partner. I liked running alone. I liked the solitude. But Bob’s enthusiasm about ultras was contagious, and one summer we began doing long runs together. We’d heard there was going to be an ultra called the Two Bridges 36 Mile, with the start and finish right here in D.C. and the winning three-man team earning a trip to Scotland to run in a similarly named race that went over two bridges of the Firth of Forth. We decided to find a third guy from our Washington Sports Club group, and give it a shot.

At the time, there was no literature or lore we knew of about how to train for an ultra. Our approach was simple: If you’re going to race 36 miles, practice running 36 miles. In those days, runners didn’t have water bottles, and we hadn’t yet heard of electrolyte tablets or gels. Our basic idea was that we would make our bodies adapt to dehydration and depletion. On hot days, it got pretty tough, but Bob loved to chat, and that kept us both distracted. Between us, we’d have some fascinating conversation, all of it coming from him. It would be so distracting, in fact, that we’d sometimes look around after several hours and have no idea where we were. One time, we got lost fairly far out in the Maryland suburbs, and by the time we found our way home, we figured we’d gone 50 miles. Bob never stopped chatting the whole way.

We were chronically desiccated, but tough, and we edged out a team from the New York Athletic Club (I think it was) to win the trip to Scotland. The night before the race, at a place called Dunfermline, we were introduced to the famous “Black Socks Brits,” rough-looking guys who reportedly ran even crazier workouts than ours every evening before (or maybe it was after) drinking ample quantities of stout, and who seemed amused that we wanted to run with them. One of them was Cavin Woodward, who that year broke the world record for 100 miles with a time of 11:38:54. That’s not a typo. The next morning, Cavin and his mates taught us “American chaps” a lesson about how to run 36 miles fast, but that’s another story. On the plane ride home, I was exhausted and thought Bob would be chastened, but he just couldn’t stop talking about what a great experience it had been.

Ed Ayres was the founding editor of Running Times and is author of the recently released book, The Longest Race: A Lifelong Runner, an Iconic Ultramarathon, and the Case for Human Endurance

WANNA RUN?by Holly Hight

Running can become such a habit that it can be taken for granted. Like doing the dishes. After running for years, it has become something I do every day. I forget sometimes that I love it.

That’s where running partners come in.

A few months ago, I took a hiatus from running. I was “burnt-out.” Maybe “burnt-out” isn’t as much the term as saying I’d “fallen out of love.” I’d been running just 2 to 3 miles a day before deciding, at last, to hang up the shoes for awhile. For some reason I didn’t love it anymore.

Then I went to coffee with a friend I hadn’t seen for awhile. Liana Bernard is both a long-time friend and an accomplished runner, having qualified for the U.S. Women’s Olympic marathon trials with a time of 2:42:27. She knows the love/hate relationship of running, the freedom and joy it brings and then, conversely, the feeling that it can be a yoke around your neck.

Like me, she’d taken time off. The trial had been in January and this was February. We had a good visit as we talked about the ups and downs of training. Then she said: “Wanna run?”

I looked outside, through the rain-smeared window of the Medford Starbucks as I held my third nice, hot mug of coffee. It was already getting dark and the wind whipped branches into knots as leaves cascaded onto the road.

No, I thought, I don’t wanna run!

I wanted to sit and sip, taking in the cozy feel of a warm coffee shop on a winter’s day, people-watching, talking, and living gently. The evening didn’t look gentle. It looked fanged. It curled its upper lip and threatened me with hypothermia.

I had a list ready: I don’t have my running clothes. I’ll have to pee. It’s getting dark. I haven’t run over 3 miles in how many weeks? They were surmountable obstacles. Liana and I are the same size (yet another running buddy benefit) and we were close to her house. There are always bathrooms. There are always headlamps. And the 5 miles she was planning could easily be my long-neglected long run.

With a running partner comes accountability, but there is also that inexplicable excitement, an adventure shared: the what the hell factor of running when you weren’t planning to, when someone else has talked you into it. So it’s freezing? So it’s dark? This could be fun! And so I stuffed my excuses and, like two little girls, we jumped up, ran out, and got ready to play.

I pulled on a fleece, yanked up some tights, and laced up a pair of her Lunar Racers (we even wear the same shoe!). Despite my trepidation, I was looking forward to running with Liana; her motivation became my motivation and her love of the sport was contagious.

As we stumbled down the steps, bounding into a slow jog, I felt the wind, sheer and cold. We would start off running right into it. “I’ll be going pretty slow,” I warned her. “I’m out of shape right now.” Liana, always reassuring, smiled and said: “No worries.” There was that acceptance, too; the pace didn’t matter. We’d run according to feel, the way we’d done before, each picking up subtle cues from the other, an unspoken dialogue.

We ran abreast, the wind howling in our ears as I felt a sudden surge of energy. There is magic in this kind of running, when the pace is too fast and the wind is too strong to talk.

Within 2 miles, I took off my hat and pulled my ponytail loose, letting my hair blow back as we ran into the wind. We’d fallen into synch as partners often do, the cadence of our footfalls unconsciously matching each other.

Suddenly, I realized: This is it. What I love. What I’d forgotten. This was spontaneous, an unexpected gift on a dark night in the rain with a friend. There were no white lines, no starting guns, no watches, and no expectations. This is what I’d remembered, what I’d fallen in love with: the freedom, possibility and exploration running represents — especially when you can share the experience with someone who feels the same way.

We sped up. We chased each other up and down lonely streets, through alleys and parking lots, along bike paths and across major thoroughfares, the downpour caught in the headlights of passing cars. We were drenched and grinning.

Five miles morphed into 6, 7, then 8. By the time we trotted to a stop in front of Liana’s home, we were smiling skyward, wonderfully out of breath from that last playful effort, a sprint from the fire hydrant to the front door.

Thank you, Liana, for reminding me that, yes, I wanna run!

Holly Hight rediscovered distance running as a means of getting back into shape after having her son in 2006. These days, she's logging longer and faster miles and enjoying every step.

CALLING DAVEby Eric Grossman

I hadn’t even decided before my fingers start pushing the buttons to call Dave.

I am sitting at a picnic table just outside McIntire Skateboard Park in Charlottesville, Va. We had driven across the state so my 12-year-old son, Gavin, could try to qualify for the national Hershey track meet. He had had high expectations for himself, and despite good performances, was disappointed that they likely hadn’t been good enough to qualify for a trip to Hershey.

Trying to get perspective, Gavin is focused on rolling to the top of a ramp on his skateboard.

And I, having maybe let the disappointment get to me too, am calling Dave.

The first time I saw Dave he had ridden his bike to the high school we attended. I wished I had. My mother, despite my pleadings, had barely managed to get me there for cross country practice. Coached wagged his finger at his watch as I arrived. Behind him, I saw the retreat of a truck driven by an upperclassman who had just been sent off.

"ONLY because this is your first practice," coach said, "you can stay. This time."

Dave knew his way around. He wore short socks and a cycling cap with the visor cocked up. He talked — and moved — fast. He was tan from continuous outdoor activity. He knew the loop that coach gave us to run out toward Seneca Park. I just followed him, tried to stay close.

The group had already been stretched thin as Dave pushed the pace late in the run. I strained to stay within a few yards of him. Finally, as the neighborhood began to look familiar and the school came into view, Dave turned and gestured for me to come alongside.

“Let’s finish together,” he said to me.

Nearly every day of every week for the next four years we did just that. When coach gave me Training the Lydiard Way to read, I created workout schedules that Dave and I followed in the summer and winter. When Dave started driving we rode to meets together. There was no better feeling than returning from a big out-of-town meet and showing up triumphantly at the school dance.

In many ways we made an odd pair. I was already tall, and Dave was still short. I was compulsively on time and Dave was chronically late. Dave drank soda and ate candy for fuel and I ate plain peanut butter sandwiches. My best workouts and races looked effortless, while Dave’s struggles were written across his limbs and face.

Naturally, he would have preferred to beat me regularly. On those few runs when he sensed I was suffering more than he was, he got a little extra bounce in his step and tightened down the screws. He’ll still recollect pushing the pace down Payne Street in Louisville, glancing sidelong to catch my grimace on a day he had it and I didn’t. It took a couple years and several of those experiences before he confessed that on the day we first met, he had wanted us to finish together because he was afraid that otherwise I might pass him in that final straight.

Without question we were good for each other. I gave structure and constancy, Dave provided energy and memory. I scheduled preseason cycles of hill-springing, Dave remembered our times. For years after high school Dave could recall nearly all of our meet performances.

We ran well. His senior year, Dave was sixth at state cross country, and I won the state 3200m.

We bonded in the way that happens when young people grow up together and share highly charged experiences. We still know without asking that the other is always available.

Before we stood together at my marriage, we went for a run together to settle my nerves. When my son was small and we worried over such things, my wife asked me who should raise him if we died. I asked Dave.

Dave now lives five hours away but we still talk about once a month and see each other about once a year. We talk about our running. Dave still runs regularly and directs college cross country meets. I run ultras. A lot of the time we talk about our kids. Dave’s daughter has settled on running track and cross country in high school. Most important for me, we talk to gain perspective.

Dave picked up on the other end and, with his familiar greeting and banter, began to ease my mind.

Eric Grossman began running in 1982 and continues to compete at a national level in trail ultramarathons. He lives with his wife and three children in Emory, VA where he is an associate professor of education.

NEVER ALONEby Jim Hage

In a survey of runners, likely apocryphal, the vast majority claimed to prefer running with friends — like sex, running is a vice best shared with another. Still, 90 percent of us run alone. I too enjoy running with others but these days my kids, job and the fact that half of my runs are after 9 p.m. dictate that I almost always run alone.

Recently I referred to a high school runner with whom I occasionally train as “my little friend,” and was interrupted with a raised eyebrow and the query, “Is this little friend visible?”

Simon certainly lives and breathes, but doubt regarding the reality of my regular running partners is not misplaced. In fact, most are friends from years gone by, now living far away, but with whom I commune during my daily rounds.

Not in a metaphysical or Hillary Clinton channeling Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House kind of way. But training partners — specifically those whose friendship and credibility is rooted in the fact that they run — remain integral to my running. Long before kids and nighttime runs, three or more of us would meet regularly to run. Of course I enjoyed the give and take of conversations necessarily boiled to their essence by the demands of a hard run, but I also relished quietly monitoring the ebb and flow of discourse.

So these days I summon memories of those old friends and imagine their take on whatever’s on my mind.

Randy is as his name suggests; with him, the conversation generally devolves toward relations with women. And not always in a prurient or deviant manner, although at times I’ve steered him away. But the good doctor (Ph.D. in English) offers unique and thoughtful takes on relationships, usually from first-hand experience. So when I’m in an interpersonal conundrum, even as an old, married guy, I’ll dial up Randy on the run and imagine what he would say.

Scott is probably my favorite running partner; we’ve been logging miles together for more than 20 years, the last 12 or so in different states. Nobody loves or knows more about the sport than Scott, and I tap his expertise daily. But not just on running. Scott reads and thinks way too much and his remarkable breadth and depth of knowledge make him my primary source for everything from religion to politics. And those cornerstones of conversational bugaboos typically provide reliable jumping off points for Scott’s acerbic, nuanced and often hilarious insights. Add the fact that Scott’s a misanthrope and our long distance, limited face-to-face encounters are sometimes better than the real thing.

Rob, I love like a brother. We bonded on a marathon trip to Spain in 1991 and have run fewer than 100 miles together in the decades since. Nonetheless, we practically channel each other’s mental and physical states, updated and made more tangible via sporadic email bursts. “Same but different” became the catchphrase for our friendship early on and it remains valid today. With Rob, I mull family concerns, primarily children, financial matters, aging running bodies and literature. Tonight, as I run alone past the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., I’ll chat up Rob about architecture, my twin boys, the stock markets and my Achilles pain.

These friends live and breathe, of course, just not on runs with me. But through their virtual presence I’m less isolated in the pursuit that makes my life most meaningful. Without them, it’s just another run.

Jim Hage fights the good fight in Maryland just outside Washington, D.C. In August, he marked 30 years of running at least two miles every day.

TRAINING WITH KEVINby Tamara Rice Lave

Before I moved to San Diego, I mostly trained with classmates or friends, the majority of whom had similar backgrounds to my own. During the time I lived in America’s Finest City, I fell in with a group that was much more diverse; it included pilots, prosecutors, peaceniks, and a plumber. Gay, straight, liberal, or conservative — everyone was welcome. We might not have voted for the same candidates or held similar views on the 2nd Amendment, but we all knew how much it hurt to run 12 x 400m with a 200 jog in between. There’s something intimate about shared pain, and when the group was in sync, keeping an even pace and alternating laps to share the load, I felt an incredible connection, one that transcended age, class, race and education.

The maestro behind this group is Kevin McCarey — a former 2:13 guy whose Irish Catholic mother once threw holy water on him for good luck while he was racing the New York City Marathon. Group members respect Kev’s expertise, but more than that, they are drawn by his infectious enthusiasm and boundless energy. Kev keeps training exciting by alternating where the group meets and surprising them with new workouts. He always has a positive attitude, and he often shows up wearing something outrageous — flame-covered boxer shorts, a rhinestone Virgin Mary T-shirt, or a sprinter’s unitard.

In a town awash with fabulous athletes, Kev has created a training group like no other. Over the years, the group has included world-class athletes like Josh Cox, Michelle Jones, and Carol Montgomery, as well as local studs. Consistently, Kev’s runners dominate the local races, and in 2000, he took six of us, including me, to the Olympic trials in the marathon.

The competitive success, however, is a byproduct of the run, not the end-all goal. For Kevin, I learned, running is an uncomplicated joy. It is a celebration of life, freedom, friendship and strength. Kev expects you to work hard, and he doesn’t tolerate whining. He yells if you talk during the hard part of the workout, and he firmly believes that junk mileage just makes you slow. He cares deeply for his athletes, celebrating their successes and lamenting their defeats both on and off the track. Kev was the first person I called after running a 6-minute PR at the California International Marathon, and he was one of the first to reach out to me after my dad died last May.

One year ago, the group was devastated by the loss of our friend and training partner Jon Tumilson, a member of SEAL Team 6, whose helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. Kevin had been especially close to J.T., and he helped organize a memorial run that brought in more than 300 people of all ages. After giving a short speech about what a remarkable person J.T. had been, Kev invited everyone to start. Although hip replacement surgery had forced Kevin to mostly replace running with mountain bike riding, he still ran the whole thing in combat boots.

In 2007, I moved to Berkeley to pursue a Ph.D. Even though the trails were fantastic, nothing could compare to running with the group in San Diego. Two summers ago, I relocated to Florida for a dream position at the University of Miami. The job may be fantastic, but the running sure is bleak. I run mostly alone, often repeats on a flat golf course just 2.3 miles around with a busy road in the middle. It is a mental struggle to get through each lap, and I often think longingly of the paradise I left behind.

More than an assortment of magical places to run, I miss friends, eager to meet you any day of the week, for whatever distance you might desire. I yearn for workouts with Kevin. I miss what it feels like to have running be fun, to push my body alongside chums. I miss having my brain shut off because we are all going through the same amount of pain, and I know that we are going to get through it together. Being part of a group makes me disciplined in a way that I am not on my own. There is no arguing; I just do what Kevin tells me to. And when it hurts, I lock my eyes on the person in front of me and let their momentum help carry me through.

Tamara Rice Lave is an Associate Professor at the University of Miami School of Law. She is a former deputy public defender from San Diego, and she had the honor of representing the United States at the 2003 IAAF Track and Field World Championships.

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